Feb

15

The need for free hydrogen in industry and fuels is huge and the potential when a low cost method arrives, staggering. Methane is nothing more than a carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms, so any production that comes up with hydrogen at low cost is going to be a breakthrough. Professor Thomas Nann and colleagues at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK may have it. They have a new technique that can convert 60 per cent of sunlight energy absorbed by an electrode into the inflammable fuel. And that’s just the discovery rating.

Nann is saying in a New Scientist article, “In fact the 60% figure is probably a worst-case scenario. This is still a preliminary study.” At 60% performance, 20% work efficiency from the hydrogen would yield 12%, as good as affordable photovoltaic solar cells. Run it through an 80% efficient fuel cell and that’s 48%, a dream for photovoltaic.

This can be a truly disruptive technology. Hydrogen can be stored for short terms. One could just burn it inside a facility or home, as the effluent is only water vapor. The technology boffins of Britain have to be mighty proud today.

To generate the gas a gold electrode with a special coating is dipped into water and exposed to light. Clusters of indium phosphide 5 nanometers wide on its surface absorb incoming photons and pass electrons bearing their energy on to clusters of a sulfurous iron compound. This material combines those electrons with protons from the water to form gaseous hydrogen. A second electrode – plain platinum this time – is needed to complete the circuit electrochemically.

The all-inorganic method solves the organic material issue of short life spans. The inorganic materials used in the Nann system are more resilient. The first generation proof of concept is “a major breakthrough” in the field, they say, thanks to its efficiency of over 60% and the ability to survive sunlight for two weeks without any degradation of performance.

Nann describes that the high efficiency is largely thanks to the indium phosphide clusters being better at grabbing photons than organic molecules. “Think of them as a butterfly net for catching photons.”

Nann explains in using a standard measure of the probability that a material will absorb a photon that hits it, each cluster is 400 times better at netting photons than the organic molecules used in previous systems. “That’s why it works so well,” he says.

The team now plans to refine the system, including lowering the cost by making it with less expensive materials. “There is no major reason for using gold or platinum,” he said. The chosen materials were used simply because they are common in the laboratory. The other potential materials may be better. For certain the gold and platinum used need replacements.

As New Scientist is noting, others have welcomed the announcement. Vincent Artero at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France is quoted saying, “It’s a significant result, my overall appreciation of this work is highly positive, both regarding the scientific level and the promises that are held by the new result.”

Licheng Sun at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, agrees. “It will certainly [provide] future research topics for water splitting,” he said.

There are all the questions of scaling up, commercial production matters, costs to install, and a wealth of other milestones to cross before one might put a kit on the roof. But the energy input, solar energy is still free, and without organics the lifespan should be quite long. If this pencils out as a disruptive technology it could get very widespread very fast indeed.

Hydrogen used quickly, or bound up with carbon has immense value. We’re witnessing one more step in a chain from sunlight to powered work. Just how sunlight gets to heating, cooling and moving us isn’t so important as what it costs. The Brits look to be on to something, lets hope it works out and quickly.

Congratulations, too! When someone does the math on the “yield” per square meter there’s going to be a lot more news about this.

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